Page 30 of Noel
I don’t think about softness anymore.About warmth.About coming home to anything other than silence.
And yet, here she is.
Holly Winters—chaos wrapped in kindness, fire wrapped in tinsel.
Something about her makes me wonderwhat if.
What if an ex-soldier like me could have something soft to come home to?
What if I could have laughter in the house again, not just the hum of security monitors?
What if Christmas really was still a time for miracles?
I grip the steering wheel a little tighter, knuckles flexing.
She shifts beside me, the soft leggings and oversized sweater she changed into when we stopped by her place barely make any sound despite her nervous energy.
Her hand brushes her thigh in a nervous rhythm, and it’s not in me to resist tracing the action.
Like her movements are calling my eyes to witness her impossible beauty.
At some point she pulled her hair up in some sort of claw clip, and now there’s a dozen curls bouncing around her face in the cutest possible way.
This woman is a knockout, and it kills me that she doesn’t even seem to know it.
Every soft breath she takes seems to pull at something inside me I thought was dead and buried.
She breaks the silence first.
“Wow, it’s pretty over here.”
I glance out the windshield.We’ve just crossed into Maplewood, the streets lined with tall oaks dusted in snow, every house twinkling with white and gold lights.
The town looks like something out of an old postcard—quiet, safe, too gentle for the world we just left.
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
“So, why here?Why not the city?”
“Actually, I grew up here,” I tell her.
She turns to look at me, surprised.
“Really?This is your hometown?”
I nod, eyes fixed on the curve of the road.
“Yeah.I live in my parents’ old place.It’s my childhood home.”
Her voice softens.
“And your parents?”
“They passed within a month of each other.Three years ago.”
Her hand tightens around her seatbelt strap.
“Oh, Noel.I’m so sorry.”
